MOUNT VERNON -—Heroin use is increasing, and small-town cities like Mount Vernon are not immune. That is the message Dave Culbertson wants to get across to youths and parents in rural America.

Culbertson”s son, Carl, died from a heroin overdose in February, after a history of drug use that stretched over almost 15 years.

“Carl started in seventh or eight grade,” said Culbertson, “first with occasional alcohol, then grass. We had no clue. He was a straight A student, self-starter and an athlete. He hid it well. Mostly weekends spending the night at someone’s house. Both escalated through freshman and sophomore years ... we were still clueless.

“He then started adding different prescription pills with the alcohol,” he continued. “His junior and senior year, things started sliding downhill. Grades dropped, attitudes changed and the people he ran with definitely changed. He was stoned many times at school; looking back, we are disappointed that nobody let us know how bad it was.

“We tried to get a group of parents together to attack the issue ... sort of a network of parents. Everyone else kept their heads in the sand, or were in denial. They said, ‘Your kid may have a problem, ours doesn’t.’ That was very frustrating.”

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has reported heroin abuse and distribution are increasing in Ohio, as have other organizations working with drug addiction and treatment. According to the Ohio Drug and Alcohol Abuse Summary, the number of publicly funded treatment admissions has increased more than 16 percent between 2001 and 2005. Nationally, in 2007, the average age of adolescent heroin admissions was 14.8 years old when they first started using heroin.

It’s not a problem confined to urban areas.

“[Heroin use] is definitely here in the county,” said Detective Sgt. Jeff Jacobs of the Mount Vernon Police Department. “It’s certainly a lot more prevalent in the county now than it has been in recent years. And not just here, but in surrounding cities, too. It’s probably not going to level off or stagnate, just because of the level of prescription abuse that is out there. A lot of the heroin usage we see is people who started out abusing pills.”

Jacobs said heroin use has risen in the last five years with the increasing availability of prescription drugs such as morphine, Oxycontin and Percocet, and also because of the relative cheapness of heroin.

Dr. Jennifer Ogle, Knox County Coroner, agrees.

“The increase in use of prescription drugs is awful,” she said. “One drug is a stepping stone to the next. That scares me because, for example, Oxycontin is expensive, and heroin is less expensive.”

Ogle said heroin is about 10 times as potent as Oxycontin, and the addiction is almost instantaneous.

“The scary part of that is that heroin can be as cheap as a six-pack of beer,” she said. “If you try heroin once, you may not get a chance to try it again. It’s a very potent and dangerous drug.”

“It’s cheap enough now for middle schoolers,” said Culbertson. “And it is 70 percent pure, not 10 percent pure as heroin was in the day of Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.”

Heroin comes into the United States from Mexico; South America, primarily Colombia; Southeast Asia, primarily Burma; and Southwest Asia, primarily Afghanistan. It comes into Ohio from distribution centers such as Chicago, Detroit and New York. Interstates I-75 and I-71 are major thoroughfares for drug traffickers.

Lt. Chad McGinty of the Ohio State Highway Patrol said the number of traffic stops northbound on I-71 in which drugs have been found is increasing. Of the drugs found, most is heroin.

“We are seeing a fair amount [of drug traffic] along I-71,” he said, adding that a large amount of the traffic is going to Morrow, Richland, Huron and Crawford counties. “Not dealers as much as users.

“A lot of these people make a couple of trips down to Columbus and get eight, 10 or 12 balloons of heroin,” he continued. “Several days later they’re doing it again.”

“We know that Columbus is known for its prevalence of heroin,” said Ogle.

“We don’t have any indication yet that there is an operation between Columbus and Knox County,” said McGinty. “But I don’t think we can safely bury our head in the sand and say it won”t hit Knox County.”

Jacobs said much of the heroin is coming from north Columbus and Westerville.

“We really can’t pinpoint where anybody in the county is a major heroin dealer,” he said. “They are still going out of town to get it.”

“We know all drugs are available in Knox County,” said Culbertson. “But Carl got his heroin from a dealer in Columbus that made ‘home’ deliveries into Knox County on a regular basis. The night Carl overdosed, we had text messages from his dealer who delivered right to the end of our driveway at 3 in the morning. He used a non-traceable, throw-away cell phone, so we couldn’t catch him.

“We knew of [Carl’s] drug use and were heartbroken,” he said. “We felt as if no other parents would give us support or get involved. ... Carl was our firstborn of six. So intelligent; so much promise. He never decided at age 14 that ‘I’m going to be a heroin addict and die of an overdose.’ He progressively made wrong decisions, one step at a time leading up to that.”